welcome to the (rubyfruit) jungle that is my brain.

after years of picking out pink ruffly clothing for me and not understanding why i never liked anything she picked out, my mother has evidently turned to ellen for dykey wardrobe support.

since i got to wisconsin, she's been taking me shopping for clothes for tanzania. while shopping one day, she mentioned that i might want to get a jacket for my business casual wardrobe, explaining that ellen wears them. before i had a chance to ask why this mattered, mom explained that ellen is the one she looks to in order to find out what gay women wear. the answer is simple shirts with a jacket, simple slacks, and tennis shoes.

gee, i've always had a hard time picking out clothes - too bad someone didn't tell me before that this is the nouveau lesbian uniform to replace flannels, mullets, and jeans!

i had to explain to my mom that tennis shoes probably wouldn't go over as well for business casual in a social enterprise in tanzania as they do on an american talk show. then again, who knows...

the first ad in the upper right-hand corner of my facebook page reads "balance your life." the ad just below reads "christmas your profile."

ha.

The NAU chapter of Net Impact - "a network of students and professionals committed to using the power of business to affect positive social change" - is officially launched. Monday night, we had a panel on social entrepreneurship and a green-catered reception afterward. The best part is that we managed to get over 200 people to our launch event, because the event was a "Pathways" program. Essentially, this means that students get credit for attending.

I got to moderate, which was pretty fun, and explain briefly what social entrepreneurship is, and then we had 3 panelists. All of our speakers were awesome - we were definitely lucky to have them - but the part of evening that will stick in my mind was one of Billy Parish's power point slides. It showed the proportion of business students who thought money was more important than passion when finding a job. Predictably, most of the business students thought this. However, when they followed up with these same people 10 years later, they found that the people with the most money were those who thought that passion was more important than money.

Now, it's not like you have to convince me that passion is more important than money - I know this. And the reason it's more important isn't because it can make you rich in the end anyhow. But for the hundreds of freshmen and sophomore business students sitting in the crowd? I think that's something a lot of them needed to hear. And it was in their language: profit-ese. :)

Another awesome thing was that one of the speakers was the executive director of a nonprofit that works to empower young women through mentorship and running - and she identified herself as a feminist. I think it might be the first time I've ever seen someone identify as a feminist in the business building since I got here. Sweet.

We will change things, little by little.

today reminds me of the rainy season in cameroon.  owning no car, and with my bike in the shop, and the bike i was temporarily borrowing also out of order, i feel justified staying home from work today due to the rain.  the sound of rain is beautiful anywhere, but especially in a dry place like arizona.

well, tomorrow i might finally get to go kayak on some challenging whitewater, for the first time in... geez, at least 3 years if not more.  i met this guy who lives in flag and writes paddling books, and he is going to take me out with a bunch of people on oak creek, which looks to be an amazing run and only runs for a few weeks per year at best (we live in a desert).

i'm in the process of starting a fair trade cooperative in flag, too, with some other people in the community.  something that has come together last minute is a trip to guatemala over spring break to meet with coffee farmers i might get a chance to work with through the fair trade coop. 

also i'm organizing a legal aid workshop for immigrants and particularly family members of undocumented immigrants in flagstaff who are still reeling from recent ICE (immigrations and customs enforcement) raids that happened here.  we are building a movement that says that we're all humans, regardless which side of some arbitrary line drawn by a white man centuries ago which supposedly separates us. 

school goes.  it's not the main thing in my life, but it's fine.  next year when i start the actual mba program, it will probably become the main thing in my life.  that may suck a bit (tho in the long run, i think it's a very good idea), i'm enjoying being single right now, and having a life that feels fulfilling in and of itself. it's such a huge contrast to when i was feeling depressed after coming home from peace corps, i can't even begin to tell you how liberating.  it's like.. life seems worth living again. 

i am going to start eating a lot more beans, i've decided. they are cheap and wholesome. they are the best. i already eat a lot of soy beans, but they are usually processed into something like tofu. i want to eat straight up beans. i want to grow beans and eat em. i need some recipees. anybody have any?

louis armstrong liked his hometown beans and rice so much that he signed his letters

red beans and ricely yours,
louis

happy 79th birthday a few days late, martin luther king.

i sure wish you were with us still, to see obama's inaugeration.  my minister told us yesterday about the time you were stabbed at a book signing and would have drowned in your own blood had you sneezed.  and how a little girl wrote you a letter saying "i'm so happy you didn't sneeze."  you later gave a speech saying you were happy you didn't sneeze, too, since if you had sneezed you would not have been around to see the student lunch counter sit-ins in 1960.  and how when students started sitting in you knew they were really standing up for the best in the american dream. 

and how if you had sneezed, you wouldn't have been around in 1962 when black people in albany, ny decided to straighten their backs and won a desegregation campaign.  and how you said that "whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they're going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it's bent."  i think you have a point, there.  i also think i could use a little back-straightening myself.  so today i'm going to meditate about back-straightening in your honor and memory.

and even though you aren't with us to see our first black president take office, you did say we would get there.  we aren't there yet, of course, but now we don't have to tell children that it's possible for a black person to be president, do we?  they will already know. 

when things got a little chaotic, my mom used to refer to our family as a three-ring circus sometimes when i was little.  she had no idea.

my friend mimi invited me to a circus party last night.  despite not knowing what that was (or perhaps *because* i didn't know what it was) i accepted.  it turns out that a travelling "radical circus" (for lack of better term, and to differentiate from animal-abusing circuses like the  shriner's circus) from milwaukee was passing through town.  they ended up staying at my friend's house because her roommate was friends with them, and they had tried to line up a show in flagstaff, but apparently flag's own "circus bachus" was unable to line up a proper show for them.  according to the circus people from milwaukee, circus bachus initially said they could do a house show at their house, but then changed that to "we're having a house party and you can come."  hence the circus party.

when i stepped into mimi's house, the circus party had already begun as far as i was concerned.  on top of the tv-less entertainment center was a cage with a rat in it.  zelda, according to the charming and flirty young woman (she made me an anarchist black star necklace out of a twist tie later that night) who was it's owner.  zelda was the only non-human member of the circus troupe.  however, as i went around the living room shaking hands, i soon met jugglers, musicians, magicians, and even a "boy-lesque" performer. 

as mimi and i attempted to bake some poppyseed muffins, we were so overwhelmed by jokes, loud balloons, and card and dice tricks that we could scarcely get out a measuring cup or find the salt.  going to the grocery store with the troupe was even more of a ... well, circus.  whether it was juggling oranges or balancing loaves of italian bread, the troupe never allowed for a dull moment in the store.  funny, i always figured that clowns would need some down time when they were off the clock.  not so, apparently - these kids just kept going like little energizer bunnies of radical circusdom.

sadly, there was no opportunity to see them officially perform.  however, i do think we got a pretty good show just by hanging out with them.

i went to my first house show in flagstaff last night at "the cottage house".  there were lots of random people and punk kids there. the music was mellow.  i liked it.   these guys played:  www.myspace.com/frenchquartermusic          

i feel so.. underground :)

yesterday i went cross-country skiing at winter park with mom and dad and tried out my new backcountry skis that i got for christmas. i already have skate skis, but they are fairly useless out west where the cross-country trails are not groomed regularly if at all.  for skating you need more than two little grooves, you need a 5-8 foot path of flattened snow, or it's not fun at all.  and out west with the volume of snow they get it would be impractical to try and keep such a trail groomed, especially when 99% of the skiers are only into downhill skiing anyway.  

i like cross-country because it's great excersize and it's a silent sport that gets you out into the woods without motors.  no motorized ski-lift, no pricey lift ticket, and no clear cutting a large swath of a mountain for recreational purposes.  and if you are really good, like the norwegians i know, you can ski up a mountain on your cross-country skiis and telemark turn down.

it was a beautiful day for skiing at winter park, with the sun shining on the light dusting of snow that had just fallen in the morning.  lots of kids were out training with their high school teams and playing around and doing ski jumps on their skinny skis. and the trails were nicely groomed. but it was ridiculously icy, with the melting that went on the day before, and winter park has a lot of super steep downhills that curve at the bottom.  i took a hard wipeout on the hard packed snow at the bottow of one of them, so my head was spinning for awhile and i've got a nice bruise developing on my right shoulder. 

when i met up with dad at the end of the day he said he had wiped out, too, and then we figured out that it had been the exact same spot, which i am now going to call stalheim's demise. this was pretty funny, because at winter park there are dozens of different trails and different steep hills that one could fall on, and because the hill where we both took a digger was in a place where you had an option to go left or right.  we both chose to go right to avoid the hill, not realizing that the right path actually took you down a much steeper hill than the left path. 

as a result, dad has a slightly sprained upper ankle (which didn't stop him from skiing several more hours) and also a nice bruise developing there to match my shoulder.  mom was the only one smart enough to avoid the steep hills all together in the icy conditions.  she stayed on the gently rolling trails and didn't fall at all.